If anyone was in any doubt that Anthropmorphic Global Warming is a fantasy theory being used by smug, air-headed, self-important interference-junkie nonentities as a source of cushy jobs, with a lot of agreeable international travel and plump salaries thrown in, take a listen to this interview on Melbourne Talk Radio (hat-tip James Delingpole, who tells the story much better than I can).
The whole show is enjoyable, but if you go to about the half-way point, you’ll hear the host Stephen Price and the AGW sceptic blogger, Andrew Bolt putting the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Change through the mincer, revealing her to be a cosmically ignorant fantasist. She’s a Brit named Jill Duggan – apparently, she “managed” (God alone knows how) Britain’s initial carbon emissions trading scheme (whatever that is – no doubt we’re paying for it). After this brutal – albeit well-mannered - mauling, she may well decide to give the Australian media a miss next time round, and stick to the lazy environmental PR poodles who pretend to be journalists in Europe.
During the interrogation, we discover that she doesn’t have a clue how much her anti-AGW policies will cost. And even less idea what effect it will have on the temperature. Her claims about new jobs and China’s willingness to embrace Green policies are hilarious (it brings to mind Roger Scruton’s handy phrase, “unscrupulous optimism” – the liberal’s default mode).
The reason we have a Melbourne radio station to thank for this devastating assault rather than, say, Newsnight or the Today Programmeis simple: the British media are cheerleaders for the farrago of lies, half-truths and pseudo-science that serves as the basis for the religiion that is AGW (no evidence whatsoever can dent its followers’ belief in its central tenets, which makes it a religion, pure and simple).
If you fancy another insight into The Liberal Mind, then you might also enjoy this fascinating lunch-table conversation between two reporters pretending to be members of a Muslim Brotherhood front organisation, and the Senior VP in charge of Development at National Public Radio, America’s (partly) publicly-funded radio network (Ron Schiller had to resign after this video was released, and the broadcaster’s female CEO – also called Schiller, but no relation - soon followed).
Basically, Ron Schiller , while talking about the possibility of NPR receiving funding from the Muslim Brotherhood, asserts that Americans don’t understand what’s happening in the Middle East, and are generally anti-Muslim, because – according to this parody of an East Coast liberal - Tea Party-style Republicans are gun-toting racists, and most Americans are too ill-educated to understand anything whatsoever. My favourite quote of all, though, is this one: “A university is also by definition considered in this country to be liberal even though it’s not at all liberal. It’s liberal because it’s intellectual.”
And there you have it – the reason American academia is overwhelmingly liberal is because we right-wingers is just too fick to be intullekchuls, innit!
Priceless!
At one point this left-wing Pooter even likens the lack of “Muslim voices” in American media to the era when “women’s voices” were under-represented - and he’s talking to Muslims! As if Muslims are big on women’s voices being heard!!
The level of pride, arrogance and snobbery on display here reminded me of John Carey’s brilliant book, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Amongst the Literary Intelligensia 1880-1939, which revealed that the giants of our early 20th century “liberal” elite utterly despised the uneducated masses (well, anyone who wasn’t like them, basically) and that they were jolly keen on applying eugenics in order to rid the gene pool of anyone who didn’t simply adore Virginia Woolf’s novels. It caused a bit of a stir when it came out in 1992. (Any liberal who feels offended by right-wing assertions that they belong in the same political ball-park as the Nazis might find Carey’s book a bit of an eye-opener.)
Given that the Republicans have been baying for NPR’s government funding to be withdrawn, the timing of this journalistic “sting” operation could hardly have been better/worse timed.
To be fair to NPR, they’ve apparently been scrupulous in reporting this story since it broke – not just, one hopes, because they can see $90m worth of tax-payers’ money swirling down the plughole. Schiller’s fellow NPR executives may have professed horror at his behaviour - but, given my experience of the sort of people who run publicly-funded broadcasting organisations, I bet they pretty much all share his extraordinarily offensive opinions.
Pedants' Corner: shouldn't that be "Anthropogenic" rather than "Anthropomorphic", which is more to do with crediting animals with having human characteristics. I make the point only to prove that I didn't spend every one of Eric Springthorpe's Biology lessons drawing pictures of electric guitars and daydreaming of the girls from the Ursuline Convent.
ReplyDeleteThursday, March 10, 2011 - 11:31 PM
Well done, EX-KCS. I am familiar with the writer and have noted his zeal over the years to correct other people's mis-use of language. A trait he shares with Simon Heffer who apparantly is the self-appointed Gauleiter of Grammar at The Telegraph. I have been corrected on many occasions so this is sweet. He once turned violently on an elderly lady for referring to Evelyn Waugh as "Wow". But one has to be careful. I have a great friend who is a film buff and who stopped speaking to me for several weeks when I pointed out to him that "The Cincinatti Kid" does not actually take place in Cincinatti. Expect choppy conditions.
ReplyDeleteScott. The John Carey book is now on the list as well. I should point out that your hero Churchill was an enthusiastic believer in eugenics in the 30's. And also it bears repeating again and again [in order to drive the lefties mad as they have no humour] that the full title of the Nazi party is "Nazional Sozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" [NSDAP] and that the red background on their flag was their version of the "the Red Flag" - is the song of the same title still the anthem of the Labour Party? They don't seem to sing it anymore at their Conference.
Friday, March 11, 2011 - 11:23 AM
Thank you, Ex-KCS – I have sacked my sub-editorial team, and am seeking replacements: there are plenty of unemployed graduates out there who’d bite my arm off for the opportunity: in fact they might even pay me for such a prestigious “internship” (all the rage these days, I’m told). Speaking of daydreaming about Ursuline Convent girls during Biology (how appropriate!), I had dinner with one of them last week – still looking terrific. At a similar reunion several years ago one of the other two chaps (non-Kings, I hasten to add) produced a large, pristine black and white photograph of the Convent’s netball team – in sports kit – circa 1968/9 – which he had ordered from the local Wimbledon paper at the time (they’d won something). The woman whose younger self was in the photo exclaimed, “Oh God, we’re all so chubby” – but we three chaps decided the word was “juicy”. Anyway, one had to applaud the purchaser’s resourcefulness – I seem to remember the rest of us relying on Knave and Fiesta to fuel our fantasies.
ReplyDeleteSDG, well, I mean, honestly – “Wow”! Could have been “Waff”, I suppose. But yes, I was a snotty sod. That got kicked out of me by book editors in the early days before I’d sold a few. I once got chewed out for using “faucet” instead of “tap” – “I know you claim not to be English, but neither are you a bloody American” is one of the kinder comments I remember from that period. The years in TV News completely removed my snot – a brutally honest environment.
The right-wing point that National Socialism was a left-wing movement is an idea whose time has come – thanks to Jonah Goldberg’s superb “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning”, which argues that Communism, Fascism and Nazism are practically identical, apart from their central obsessions – respectively, Class, Nation and Race. Given that Labour used to sing The Red Flag, as you point out – I’ve no idea if the fools have given it up yet - I always wondered how our liberal media would have reacted to the Tory party singing the Horst Wessell Song, with slightly altered lyrics, replacing Hitler with Thatcher and Germany with Britain etc. – same difference, really.
Saturday, March 12, 2011 - 12:27 PM
SDG: I rather wish I hadn't made the point now. I suspect there will be retribution of some sort. The 18 year old Gronmark version would have made my life hell for a week. Is it possible to be blackballed from a blog?
ReplyDeleteSaturday, March 12, 2011 - 02:11 PM
I am not sure that lefties have no sense of humour, it is more that they cannot bear to have their beliefs mocked. The leader of the KCS Politburo in the late 1960s was a joyful, funny boy and great company. He once wandered into English A level class ostentatiously reading a magazine called Keep Left. I asked him whether his interest in road safety was a recent enthusiasm and gave my view that it was a more worthwhile hobby than plotting the overthrow of democracy. I was surprised at the violent reaction to what was a pretty feeble joke from some one I thought of as a close friend. I've seen the same reaction from other lefties many times since.
ReplyDeleteSaturday, March 12, 2011 - 02:29 PM
Ex-KCS, if we’re talking about the same person, he and I became permanently estranged during our last year at college – because I questioned his self-image, his memory and motives in affairs of the heart.
ReplyDeleteI’d always taken the piss out of his impeccably right-on political views, but frost began to form when he – quite seriously – demanded that a mutual friend destroy the contact prints of photos taken at a jolly party where we’d all been plastered: no nudity, nothing improper, just a bunch of young inebriates having a jolly time. “You people don’t understand what a disastrous effect this could have on my political career!” he thundered. I think it was my hysterical laughter and the phrase “You pompous prick!” that tore it. I later compounded the offence by accusing him of racial hypocrisy for splitting up with his Chinese Malaysian girlfriend on the grounds that his uncle had been interned by the Japanese, and would therefore be upset if he got married to someone with yellow skin!
The final rift came over lunch a few weeks later when he was railing against the disruptive behaviour of college sports rowdies (insensitive, privileged boarding school types, of course) and I, quite gently, reminded him that on a trip to Paris the previous year some French people had asked him to show respect at some war memorial or other where he’d been a bit raucous. “Never happened!” he said, then got up and walked out. I went round to his place once after we’d left college in an attempt to patch things up – after all, I thought we’d been close friends friends - but left after an hour when it became obvious I hadn’t been forgiven. And that was that.
I attended his funeral 18 years later (his terribly nice mother tracked me down at a party political conference in Brighton). I couldn’t understand why she’d felt the need to invite me, but she was evidently distraught and very keen to have me there. When I got there, I understood: a lot of people turned out, but there was only one other person from KCS (a lifelong friend, much to my surprise) and, apart from me, no-one from his college days (and I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted me there, anyway).
I’m not saying this rather strange behaviour was purely down to his extreme left-wingery – I can be very prickly myself, but they don’t half take offence easily and they don’t half let politics interfere with their lives! (I only ramble on at such great length because he was one of only three people I genuinely regret losing touch with – there was one other KCS contemporary, and the other was at college with us.)
Saturday, March 12, 2011 - 04:22 PM
It is the same person. Our paths crossed a few years before he died. He was uncomfortable talking about anything but cricket and football and in a blokey way quite unlike his old self. It was as if he had to maintain cover, as they say in espionage circles. Neither of us followed it up. I couldn't attend his funeral as I was living abroad and have regretted it since. I still feel sadness for a friendship lost. I imagine Stewart Holton was the other KCS old boy there.
ReplyDeleteSunday, March 13, 2011 - 08:49 AM
If I could just introduce another aspect of the Ursuline:
ReplyDeleteWe have to go back a bit, to 1983 when DM and his new young wife are trying to decide where to live. Proletarian that he is, DM favours a basement flat in Earl's Court with all the noise, dirt, high population density and ready access to doner kebabs at 2 a.m. that location has to offer. His wife has something more like West Byfleet in mind, or West Fleebyte as DM hilariously describes it. They reach a compromise. Wimbledon.
August 1984, and they move in to their new Wimbledon home. And on the same day, at the top of the road, the Old Firm match is played, hundreds of Ricards Lodge and Ursuline Convent girls fight it out, all the way down Lake Rd, onto the hill, and when they reach the station a policeman is slightly hurt when an Ursulina hits him over the head with a lavatory chain with the handle still attached.
Take another look at that St Trinian's photograph ...
Sunday, March 13, 2011 - 03:17 PM
DM – I believe there are many men with sordid appetites who would pay good money for a ring-side seat for the even you describe. 1983? Mrs. Thatcher’s fault, in that case.
ReplyDeleteEx-KCS – yes, it was Stewart, who delivered a very moving homily, as did Richard’s second wife (he was divorced). His Primary School teacher was very funny about his seat bouncing up and down as he frenziedly tried to answer every question first – he never changed! Michael Howard recalled his fondness for the phrase, “That’s outrageous, Minister!”
When I read your comment I remembered that I also encountered him once in the late ‘80s, on the phone. I’d phoned the Lord Chancellor’s department for a comment and, for some odd reason, Richard answered (I’d been looking for a Press Officer). Our conversation was so stilted – he told me how much travel there was with his job, and listed the countries he’d visited – that I too felt no desire to follow it up. All very odd.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 04:38 PM
I'm glad that Michael Howard both came and spoke, in essence a pretty decent man whatever the media say. He would have known our friend's politics. I now regret even more not having been there.
ReplyDeleteThursday, March 17, 2011 - 04:50 PM